Sit Illustrated: The Meditation Cartoon Book

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“I’ve read it cover to cover more times than I like to admit and my impression is – outstanding. (Hey, you should be sitting!) Some of the cartoons are so on the spot its hilarious beyond words.” — Dr Per Sundin, Cosmology & Gravity Group, Department of Mathematics, University of Cape Town

Once upon a time, not very long ago, in a land not renowned for its meditative traditions, a small group of spiritual aspirants began learning to “sit” or “meditate”. At first, they began gently, sitting for short periods of time—only 15 minutes. Then, several years later, they all began to sit together for 1 hour first thing in the morning—at 6:30 am.

Although not always together, or as early, they continued to do this more or less consistently for the next few years. Occasionally, they received simple comments or advice about how to do this usefully—how to sit up properly, stay in present time and place, breathe, relax, be poised, investigate the source of their attention, be ready and be very still.

Simply sitting still and trying to manage one’s flow of attention can be quite humbling, and if modest amounts of private humiliation can be considered good clean fun, the drawings in this book show that the benefits of sitting are accompanied by many special opportunities for good clean fun.

Although sitting is reputed to have multiple benefits, being funny is not usually mentioned as one of them. Perhaps this is just an oversight.

Each sketch in this collection was drawn from the illustrator’s personal sitting experience, and at some point it may occur to you that meditators are not inherently graphic artists. On this you are probably correct and we would only suggest that, as with hand crafted fabrics, diverse thread size and the occasional twig can all be appreciated as part of the unfiltered natural authenticity.

Whether you are a meditator or not, if you find these sketches amusing, that would be very good, and if you are encouraged to sit—well, that would be extra very good!